Fifteen years ago, computers were used in specialized applications and used programs specifically designed to accomplish a specialized task. The few computer operators were highly trained in the use of computers and there were very few people that had computers in the home. Today, millions of people have computers in their home and office. What was a small market for computer programs is now huge.
Along with the growth in the software programs market has come the need for mass distribution of software programs. As many of the programs developed for personal computers are costly, the prospective buyers want to be able to test the program before they buy it. Further, they want to test the program on their computer in their home or office. The suppliers of software programs would like to widely distribute their software for buyers to test but, of course, there must be some means to prevent people from copying and preventing unlimited use of the program. In addition to protecting the program, purchasing the software must be as convenient as possible for the buyer.
Prior art methods have been developed to try to protect software however they have not meet with acceptance by both the software suppliers and the users. Some of the prior art methods required additional hardware which increased the cost of the product and made the use of the product inconvenient for the user. Other methods required a special floppy disk to be in a disk drive for the software to work. However, users disliked having to keep track of the floppy disk.
What is needed in the industry is a method for distributing trial software to users that allows the users to conveniently test the software while, at the same time, protecting the interests of the software developers. Also, there is a need for a method to allow the buyers to easily purchase the software.